Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti SONIC Edition Review - PAGE 2

The Palit GTX 560 Ti Sonic comes packaged in a relatively standard sized box for a mid-range graphics card. Palit has included a depiction of a very robust and powerful engine with the Palit logo on the front of the packaging. Surrounding the engine, Palit lists the features of the 560 Ti such as DX11, 3D Vision, PhysX, CUDA and SLI support. Below these is a Sonic series logo along with the memory size and included video output options.

The back of the GTX 560 Ti Sonic packaging includes the minimum system requirements, technical specifications and a short description of the using a GeForce GTX product. While most of the packaging is done in English, Palit lists the technical specifications in twelve different languages.

When it comes to accessories Palit has taken a minimalistic approach and only included a drivers disc, quick installation guide and a dual 4-pin to 6-pin power adapter.

The Palit GTX 560 Ti is built on a custom red PCB that measures only 7.5 inches and uses a dual slot fansink. The cooler used by Palit is also a custom design that includes a low-profile heatsink with dual intake fans.

The GTX 560 Ti Sonic uses NVIDIA's latest GF114 GPU which is an updated version of the GF104 seen in the GTX 460 graphics card. Internally the difference between the architecture is very small, as they both include the same level of transistors and GPCs, but the GF114 has been optimized for better performance-per-watt, has all available streaming multiprocessors enabled and has faster reference clock speeds. The Palit Sonic edition, however, increases the clock speed even further as this model comes with a graphics processing clock speed of 900MHz and a CUDA engine set at 1800MHz. That is an increase of 88MHz (or just over 10%) in comparison to a standard GTX 560 Ti. The Sonic Edition card includes 1GB of GDDR5 memory that also comes overclocked, rated at 1050Hz (4200MHz QDR).

The back of the graphics card gives us a better view of the custom PCB and in the upper left portion you can spot a ONSemi NCP5388 voltage controller. You can also see that Palit has placed the warranty sticker directly on top of one of the GPU retention screws. This means that any alterations to the heatsink or thermal paste will result in voiding the warranty.

The Palit GTX 560 Ti Sonic uses some additional power compared to a reference GTX 560 Ti, but with power consumption being just over 170W, it is still easily powered by dual 6-pin power connectors. The on-board connectors are found under the heatsink shroud toward the rear of the PCB and are side facing. Though this is a mid-range product that isn't as power hungry as some of the high-end models, it is still recommended that at least a 500W power supply be used to adequately run the card.

The card uses the PCI-Express 2.0 interface compliant with any PCI-E x16 slot. This means it is backwards compatible and it can be used on older motherboard models as well newer ones via a PCI-E x16 slot.

SLI is supported, but only in a limited 2-way configuration. Still, even with only dual card SLI support, the GTX 560 Ti has proven to scale very well and in some instances can surpass the performance of the high-end GTX 580.

The on-board I/O options of the Palit card also differs from the reference models. Here Palit has included dual-DVI outputs, a full-size HDMI 1.4a connector and a single VGA port. Even with four physical video options available, only two can be used at any given time. So dual cards will still be needed to run 3D surround, or more than two monitors.

The card has an integrated HDMI sound device, so the HDMI port is capable of supporting both HD video and audio. It also includes bitstreaming support for Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master audio.

Comments

The performance seems alright, but it's the other stuff (the fact that its smaller and has two fans plus some OC) that's included and the MRSP doesn't actually reflect the bonus features?

The lack of being able to tri-SLI it isn't that big of a loss, I think. It's a good card, but I'd think the sort of people that would go beyond dual SLI are the sort that would be willing to pump a lot of extra money into their rig (so getting higher end cards).

Also leochan, will you or any other members of the team start adding 3D-Vision (if not ATI-3D as well) to performance tests? 3D gaming is niche, sure, but it'd be nice to see how certain cards cope with 3D rendering.

The performance seems alright, but it's the other stuff (the fact that its smaller and has two fans plus some OC) that's included and the MRSP doesn't actually reflect the bonus features?

The lack of being able to tri-SLI it isn't that big of a loss, I think. It's a good card, but I'd think the sort of people that would go beyond dual SLI are the sort that would be willing to pump a lot of extra money into their rig (so getting higher end cards).

Also leochan, will you or any other members of the team start adding 3D-Vision (if not ATI-3D as well) to performance tests? 3D gaming is niche, sure, but it'd be nice to see how certain cards cope with 3D rendering.

The MSRP is 249.99, which is the same as the reference models so there is not additional cost added for this card even though it has better stock performance.

As for the 3D testing we could do that in future reviews as we are in the processes of acquiring new games for our benchmarks. We are adding more DX11 titles. The issue I have with the 3D testing though is that we are only setup to test NVIDIA 3D and not AMD. That would make for sort of looped sided testing. Unless you know someone with a very cheap 120Hz DisplayPort monitor. LOL

hi i think its a nice review to show a Palit card as i can remember they were at the beginning of the 460 GTX release the fastest oc card for a few weeks and this looks gr8 but now there is faster oc 560 GTX Ti out there. Love to see reference 560 Ti is more efecient than 5870 from the charts and compete prety nicely with it at lower resolutions like im using 1920 x 1080 so ill get this card instead and that Asus Aries card is still very fast but 6970 or even 6950 in crossfire beats it down. Can't wait for next reviewed card